Page 22 of Junk Magic

“It wasn’t your fault,” Cyrus said, not for the first time.

But for once, I didn’t change the subject—or get angry, or suddenly remember something I had to do. Maybe because it had just happened again, not to a student but to someone about the same age. Adam had been nineteen, the youngest of my former class, and the sweetest, before he tried to kill me.

He hadn’t known that's what he was doing. He’d thought he was undergoing something known as the Trials, a test the Corps mandated for all its trainees after the first year or so. Students were told that it would give them a chance to demonstrate the skills they’d acquired by the end of basic training, and to showcase what they could do.

In fact, that was a lie.

It was a test of character.

The specifics of the test differed, because each instructor designed and supervised their own. But they all had two things in common: they were based on an illusion that felt totally real once you were inside it, and they featured a central battle, one that went terribly wrong. Each student saw their teammates die around them, leaving them with the decision to either finish the mission and die, or save themselves and fail. If they chose the latter, no matter how good they were otherwise, they washed out. And if they chose the former, they found out how they faced death by actually doing it.

The test was brutal but necessary. If a dark mage covertly entered the program, he or she wouldn’t learn anything new in basic training. But the apprenticeship phase was more advanced, and the Corps did not like the idea of someone using our own magic against us.

Only that was exactly what had happened in my case.

Specifically, an illusion had been laid to convince my students that they were undergoing the Trials right then, and that the only way to pass was to kill me. They hadn’t realized that, if you think you’re being tested, you’re probably not. And that if I died at their hands, I’d really be dead, not just in an illusion.

Or that they would be.

“They gave me a new class of students today,” I told Cyrus. “A new group with Relic abilities that could go terribly wrong. And then, that same night, I killed another young man, almost their age—”

“Lia.”

“—and now I have to wonder if the Corps is insane, or if I am. I shouldn’t be teaching anybody! They should have given me another assignment after Adam, something else, anything else!”

“But they didn’t,” Cyrus said calmly. “Because you didn’t get him killed. A traitor did.”

“Then why doesn’t it feel that way?”

Cyrus moved from lying slightly below and beside me to the reverse. His body draped over mine, his hands framed my face, and he looked down at me with gleaming eyes. “Because you’ve got a soft heart under than hard shell, although you hate for people to know it. Because you’d have preferred to die yourself rather than kill one of your students. Because you’ve been carrying the guilt around for six months for something you didn’t do, and it’s eating you up inside.”

“But I did do it,” I told him miserably. “It was my spell; my magic. Just as it was tonight—”

Cyrus’s eyes flashed. “You did not kill Colin! You saved the rest of us. Look at those boys tomorrow; look at their faces. They’re here, alive, right now, because you risked yourself to make sure they would be. I thank you for that. They will thank you, too, once the shock wears off—”

“One of them won’t.”

“Damn it, Lia!” He looked exasperated. “You’re a war mage! You must have lost people before—”

“Adults. Trained operatives. Not children.”

I sat up, struggling out from under him and hugging my arms around my knees. “And now they’re giving me more of them. And not just regular recruits. But vulnerable, marginalized, fucked up kids. I don’t want this assignment, Cyrus!”

He lay there and looked at me for a moment. I couldn’t see him very well, barely an outline in the dim haze of light spread by my clock. But somehow, I knew he was frowning.

“Then tell them that. Ask for another job. But think about this before you do. None of us had ever seen anything like that Relic, as you call it. None of us, me included, knew how to fight it. Do you think we could have handled it ourselves? Or would there have been a lot more bodies on the ground if you weren’t there?”

I started to speak, but he shushed me. “Not finished yet. And maybe think about this, too, while you’re at it. I’ve been wanting to say this for a while, but I’ve been tiptoeing around, because you never wanted to talk about it and I didn’t want to force the issue. But maybe I should have.

“The day Adam died, there was an entire squad of well-armed, well-trained mages here, and only one of you. You didn’t have your weapons, you’d just woken up, and you were handicapped by not wanting to kill your own students. And yet you saved all except one.

“How many other instructors would have been able to do that? How many would have even tried, with their own lives on the line? Or taken a bullet and almost died to bring down the bastard who caused it?

“You’re better than you know, Lia de Croissets. And the Corps is damned lucky to have you. And tonight, so were we.”

I just sat there, suddenly glad for the dark because my face was wet and probably screwed up as well. Not that it mattered when your partner is a Were. I didn’t know if Cyrus smelled the tears or heard the slight catch in my throat that I wasn’t fast enough to stop. But the next second, his arms were around me and he was whispering nonsense words in my ear like you do for a traumatized child.

It should have been embarrassing; I was a big, bad war mage. I didn’t need soothing. Only I guessed I did, because I broke down in his arms, sobbing, for Adam, for Colin, for all the kids fighting this war who shouldn’t be. And all the while, Cyrus just held me, murmuring softly, letting me get it all out, even though he’d had just as bad a day as I had.

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